The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4 eBook

In short, dear Sir, I wish you not to lose your time;
that is, either ,not reply, or set your mark on your
answer, that it may always be read with the rest of
your works.

(338) Now first collected.

(339) “An Examination of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Chapters of Mr. Gibbon’s History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Henry Edward
Davis, B.A. of Baliol College, Oxford.”
He was born in 1756 and died in 1784, at the early
age of twenty-seven. He was a native of Windsor,
and is believed to have received a present from George
the Third for this production.-E.

At last, after ten weeks I have been able to remove
hither, in hopes change of air and the frost will
assist my recovery; though I am not one of those ancients
that forget the register, and think they are to be
as well as ever after every fit of illness. As
yet I can barely creep about the room in the middle
of the day.

I have made my printer (now my secretary) copy out
the rest of Mr. Baker’s Life; for my own hand
will barely serve to write necessary letters, and
complains even of them. If you know of any very
trusty person passing between London and Cambridge,
I would send it to you, but should not care to trust
it by the coach, nor to any giddy undergraduate that
comes to town to see a play; and, besides, I mean
to return you your own notes. I Will Say no
more than I have said in my apology to you for the
manner in which I have written this life. With
regard to Mr. Baker himself, I am confident you will
find that I have done full justice to his work and
character. i do not expect You to approve the inferences
I draw against some other persons; and yet, if his
conduct was meritorious, it would not be easy to excuse
those who -were active after doing what he would not
do. You will not understand this sentence till
you have seen the Life.

I hope you have not been untiled or unpaled by the
tempest on New-year’s morning.(340) I have
lost two beautiful elms in a row before my windows
here, and had the skylight demolished in town.
Lady Pomfret’s Gothic house in my street lost
one of the stone towers, like those at King’s
Chapel, and it was beaten through the roof The top
of our cross, too, at Ampthill was thrown down, as
I hear from Lady Ossory this morning. I remember
to have been told that Bishop Kidder and his wife
were killed in their bed in the palace of Gloucester
in 1709,(341) and yet his heirs were sued for dilapidations.
Lord de Ferrers,(342) who deserves his ancient honours,
is going to repair the castle at Tamworth, and has
flattered me that he will Consult me. He has
a violent passion for ancestry—­and, consequently,
I trust will not stake the patrimony of the Ferrars,
Townshends, and Comptons, at the hazard-table.
A little pride would not hurt our nobility, cock
and hen. Adieu, dear Sir; send me a good account
of yourself Yours ever.